TST Multisport

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Blog

I have spent the past 4 days at the Endurance Coaching summit in Boulder CO learning from some of the best coaches in the business. Some of the coaches included Joe Friel, Dirk Friel, Dave Scott, Corey Hart, Dr. Paul Laursen to name only a few. It was an eye opening experience for many reasons. First off, I learned an unbelieveable amount of new information from almost all of the coaches that presented. I also had the opportunity to network with some of the best coaches in the business.

I could talk about each individual piece of information that I learned from every coach but that isn't what I want to write about.

I am writing about something I began to realise throughout the summit and something that was very clear on the final day.

The DAVE SCOTT run clinic was attented only by coaches and there about 40 coaches there. We did a slight warm up on the track and then gathered around Dave as he explained in depth some very specific stretching and muscle activation drills. I commonly do glute activation before my runs, but Dave put a LOT more emphasis on it and I learned some new techniques for activating the glutes before ahard run.

It was interesting to watch at least half the coaches struggle to undertsand the concept and not perform the drills properly, which would be understandable if Dave wasnt walking everyone through each drill specificially.

We then moved on to some running drills where he wanted us to over exaggerate our stride and feel the impact of the heel strike, then in contrast run on our toes, and finally to run more on the midfoot while allowing the heel to touch the ground. When doing these drills at least 15 coaches went to the front and appeared to not listen to Dave at all... or they just wanted the glory of being in the front of a Dave Scott workout???? The same coaches maintained position at the front throughout all the footstrike drills and didnt follow instruction. It felt like a high school gym class where everyone was trying to show up one another.

This was just the beginning. We then were instructed to run 1x400 on the track at our aerobic pace then another 400 at threshold. It was amaizing to me the amount of coaches who got in the front group on the track and apparently ran 6:15mi pace for their aerobic endurance?! Then on the threshold apparently all of these coaches were able to hold 4:45mi pace for a 10k. I was a bit shocked honestly because after all we werent doing a "real" workout and we were there to learn from one of the greatest triathletes of all time.

I then had a conversation with another established coach later in the day about if we thought a coach could successfully and whole heartedly coach an athlete with an EGO so big? Could these coaches who didnt follow instructions and didn't perform a specified workout be trusted to coach high level athletes who they expect to perform the exact opposite of them? If a coach is also an athlete where do they draw the line when it comes to the importance of their athletes performance and their own performance? I dont have all the asnwers myself and that is why I wrote this blog, because I want to hear from other coaches and athletes what they think about the lower questions.

I will be posing other questions in the next few days in regards to some things I learned or noticed at the Endurance Coahing Summit.